April 5, 2012

Why can't Mary J. Blige do a comic performance in an ad for a fast-food restaurant? I'm sure they paid her a lot of money and that she was well represented and uncoerced. What really is the problem?

Here's the criticism that appeared on a website aimed at black women:

... I know you may be thinking everybody, across the world, loves chicken. It’s true, most people get down with the poultry; but as a black woman, singing passionately about chicken is not the move!...

Burger King got you gurl.... They hurriedly throw together clichéd, often stereotypical, advertising campaigns. And that’s where you came in, Mary. Having a black woman sing about chicken was no mistake. They’re trying to reach the “urban” (aka black) demographic. And God knows black folk, won’t buy anything unless there’s a song, and preferably a dance, attached to it.

With all the angst about racial stereotypes in the past few weeks, there might be some value to analyzing this relatively lightweight incident.

I can't believe anyone was offended by this unless he/she was already primed to be offended by anything. It wasn't even so much a heavy duty commercial as your day in, day out fluff. If it hadn't been singled out as racist I wouldn't have thought anything about it one way or the other.

Actually, I did have one passing thought when it started. The white guy asking about the chicken was the typical clueless white bread guy you always see in commercials. But so many commercials do this it hardly rates a second thought.

Looks like Mary didn't take but a sec to be down with the sistas and blamin' the white execs at Burger King for putting out an "unfinished" ad. Translation: Mary did her part, sang whatever she sang for a handsome paycheck and coulda cared less about the finished product, which is just the white man's foolishness in any case.

I personally enjoy fried chicken and i go to a place owned by black people and i order the fried chicken and i sit down with the black people and eat my fried chicken. And they eat theirs. It is delicious and wonderful and we are all happy for the people who eat it and those who cook it. The person or persons making the eating of fried chicken by black people a stereotype have obviously never eaten this chicken. They should fuck themselves while they are at it.

Black people make themselves appear ridiculous by taking offense at everything. Are they so lacking in itelligence that they really buy into the scam being perpetrated by the race hustlers like Jackson & Sharpton? Are they not smart enough to figure out how the race-baiting leftist media pundits use black people to further their own political agenda while silently holding them in contempt for being so easily manipulated?

i suppose there could be a case made had the ad shown a wide-grinning mary j saying something like "ah sho does likes me some fry chickens!!" but she sang a little jingle about chicken WRAPS...not even fried...so are wraps a new racial stereotype ?? =

On the PBS Newshour tonight they had a segment on homophobia in Uganda. They interviewed a Ugandan who claimed that there weren't any gays and, if there were, it's because they had been exposed to and corrupted by western culture. The PBS segment seemed to indicate that much of the homophobia was started by white Christian evangelists who preached that homosexuality was a sin. There you have it: homosexuality is caused by exposure to white culture, and homophobia is caused by white preachers. You've got to admit that whites really are clever.....Why is liking fried chicken a negative stereotype? It's not like it's curry or ground chickpeas or that other crap that Indians like.

I was once lost in an urban neighborhood when I found myself suddenly stuck in traffic. The right lane was essentially stopped. Oh, it inched forward a little now and then, but it wasn't moving.

So I eased into the left lane and drove past. And what did I find? A two-block line-up to get into Popeye's Fried Chicken. Meanwhile, the McDonald's across the street had two cars in its drive through lane.

Maybe Popeye's had a sale that day. Maybe that McDonald's was really bad, and all the locals knew it. Maybe all those drivers weren't black (though the ones I could see were).

Or maybe, yes, the locals there really prefer fried chicken over the alternative.

Stereotypes are bad when you use them as an excuse to categorize or judge an individual. But stereotypes can also reflect some truth.